One Man's Justice

by Akira Yoshimura

  He stubbed out the remaining embers of the cigarette, took the pistol from his belt, unloaded it, and stuffed it between the folds in the blanket inside his rucksack. As he stood up and took one last look at his birthplace, the thought that he would likely never again set foot in the village, and just as likely never again see his brother and sister or his parents, saddened him.

  Breathing in the cool night air, he set off again along the path. Around him in the darkness he could hear the chirps and cries of birds and the flutter of wings as they moved from branch to branch under the forest canopy.

  He crossed through the precincts of the shrine and quickened his pace as he made his way along the paths between the paddy fields. The moon had progressed along its arc across the heavens, and by now was much higher in the sky. Takuya looked around as he hurried toward the station. Again, just to be safe, he wanted to board the train at least one stop down the line. A palpable feeling of satisfaction came over him. At last he was on the run and, at least for the moment, in control of his own destiny. It was similar to the feeling of suspense he had felt in the pit of his stomach when he was the officer in charge of the anti-aircraft defence operations room.

  The lights of an incoming train came into view as it skirted round a hill and then straightened out alongside the river. Zigzagging through the paddy fields, Takuya drew steadily toward the tracks.

  The train rumbled forward, spilling only a modicum of light on the outside world. Takuya stopped and watched as the train turned to the left in a long arc. The engineer was obviously working hard feeding coal into the boiler, as Takuya could clearly see the red-tinged silhouette of a man repeatedly bending and twisting in front of the firebox.

  Staring at the tail-light of the last carriage as it moved into the distance, he started off again.

  3

  The first time Takuya set eyes on a crew member of a B-29 Superfortress it made an indelible impression on him.

  On 16 June 1944, the bombing attack on Kokura and Yawata by B-29 Superfortresses operating from airfields in China was the first to target mainland Japan.

  The first news that long-range heavy American bombers had been seen in China had arrived on the second of April that year, in a telegram from Imperial Army Headquarters in China, and from then on there were continual reports that the US Army Air Force was strengthening its presence around bases in China’s Chengdu region. Recognising that this build-up very likely presaged attacks on targets in northern Kyushu, Imperial Headquarters followed the recommendation of Western Regional Command and ordered the Nineteenth Air Force Division, stationed in the northern Kyushu area, to begin preparations for a strategic defence under the direction of Western Regional Headquarters. Comprising two squadrons, the Nineteenth Air Force Division boasted seventy of the latest fighter planes, and could put thirty in the air at any one time, the pilots all veterans with over five hundred hours in the air. They had carried out hours of practice at night-time interception of heavy bombers, and had rehearsed their angles of attack again and again on a B-17 bomber that had been seized intact and airworthy in the early stages of the war in the Pacific. In conjunction with this preparation, anti-aircraft batteries were deployed in the northern Kyushu area, and joint exercises were carried out with the air force under the direction of Western Command to provide the optimum defensive screen.

  At Western Command headquarters, an air defence intelligence unit was set up, and spotters posted to points all over the Korea Strait and Kyushu region, along with twenty-eight electronic detection stations. In addition, an intelligence network was established, involving further spotters, electronic devices and naval vessels outside the defensive perimeter proper.

  At 11.31 p.m. on 15 June 1944, a report came in to Western headquarters from the electronic detection post on Cheju island that unidentified aircraft were moving eastwards. Forty-five minutes later, it was reported that the aircraft had crossed the line between Izuhara on Tsushima island and the island of Fukue in the Gotoh archipelago, and had then crossed the line between Izuhara and Hirado in western Kyushu, meaning that the aircraft were travelling at around four hundred kilometres an hour. At first it was thought that they might be Japanese spotter planes, but none was capable of flying at that speed and, as no friendly aircraft had been reported taking that flight path, it was judged that this intrusion must represent a force of enemy heavy bombers heading for the northern Kyushu area. The tactical operations centre reacted by immediately contacting the Nineteenth Air Force Division and the Western Region anti-aircraft batteries on special hotlines, and Takuya, as duty officer, issued a full air-raid alert for the northern Kyushu area in the commander’s name.

  Forty-seven aircraft attacked Kokura and Yawata that night, but they met with such determined resistance from fighters that the bombing they did manage before heading back to China was virtually ineffective. Seven American bombers were shot down during the attack.

  At Western Command headquarters they had assumed that the intruders were B-17s, but inspections of the wreckage of aircraft shot down near the town of Orio in Fukuoka prefecture and Takasu in Wakamatsu city revealed that the planes were in fact the latest American bomber, the B-29 Superfortress. A crew member’s own film of B-29s during flight, discovered amid the wreckage of one plane, confirmed the appearance of the new aircraft.

  Subsequently, raids by US bombers based in China were made on Sasebo on the eighth of July; on Nagasaki on the eleventh of August, and on Yawata on the twentieth and twenty-first; on Ohmura on the twenty-fifth of October, the eleventh and twenty-first of November, the nineteenth of December and the sixth of January the following year; but after that the B-29 bases were switched to Saipan, and attacks from mainland China stopped.

  During those months, assisted by pinpoint detection of incoming aircraft by electronic detection stations and spotters, the fighters ensured that bombing damage was kept to a minimum, shooting down a total of fifty-one bombers while losing only nine of their own.

  Of the American crew members who baled out of their disabled aircraft, seventeen survived to be taken prisoner. These men were escorted by the kempeitai to defence headquarters in Tokyo.

  Then B-29s operating from bases in Saipan began a concerted bombing campaign on urban targets such as Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, and in March 1945 they again turned their attention to the Kyushu region. The Nineteenth Air Force Division defence was so effective that the numbers of American airmen parachuting into captivity increased dramatically. Previously such prisoners of war had been escorted to camps in Tokyo by the kempeitai, but in early April the Army Ministry issued a directive to Western Regional Command, delegating authority by stating that the crew members should be ‘handled as you see fit’.

  Six days after that order was received, a kempeitai lorry carrying twenty-four American airmen pulled up at the rear entrance of Western Regional Headquarters. The men were unloaded and shepherded in pairs into cells originally designed to hold local soldiers awaiting court martial.

  That evening, together with a staff officer from the tactical operations centre, Takuya was assigned to guard the prisoners in the cells. The captive crewmen had just been given their evening meal trays, so when Takuya entered the holding cell area he saw tall, well-built men, some brown-haired and some blond, sitting in their cells eating rice balls flavoured with barley, or munching slices of pickled radish.

  Takuya stood in the corridor and stared. The prisoners behind the bars were the first American airmen he had ever set eyes upon.

  As the officer in charge of the air defence tactical operations centre, Takuya was among the most knowledgeable of the headquarters staff about the Superfortress bomber. Every time B-29 units intruded into the Kyushu region airspace, his staff painstakingly followed their incoming flight path and then tracked them as they headed off over the sea after completing their missions. Details such as the B-29’s total wingspan of 43 metres, its wing surface area of 161.1 square metres, its fully laden weight of 47,000 kilograms, its
top speed and altitude of 590 kilometres per hour at 9500 metres, its maximum range of 8159 kilometres with a 3-ton load of bombs, its ten 12.7-millimetre machine-guns and one 20-millimetre cannon and its maximum bomb load of 8 tons, were etched into Takuya’s mind, and he had become very familiar with the appearance of the Superfortress by examining photographs of the aircraft – both in flight and as wreckage on the ground.

  Hours of meticulous study of the B-29 enabled Takuya to deduce the likely target by determining the speed and course of the incoming bombers, and then, by calculating the intruders’ time spent in Japanese airspace, how much fuel remained and, from that, the probable course and timing of their escape route.

  To Takuya and his colleagues, who had followed the movements of these aircraft so faithfully since the previous year, the squadron of B-29s were a familiar, almost intimate presence. But now, seeing these American airmen standing and sitting on the other side of the bars, Takuya realised that all along his perception of the enemy had been limited to the aircraft itself, and that somehow he had forgotten there were human beings inside it.

  He was surprised that most of them looked to be around twenty years of age, some as young as seventeen or eighteen. It shocked him to think of the Superfortresses he had tracked so meticulously, constructed with the latest equipment and instruments, being manned by young men scarcely past their teens.

  Some of the men were the same height as the average Japanese, but most were around six feet tall, and all were endowed with sturdy frames and well-muscled buttocks. To men used to a diet of meat, the rice balls and pickled radish must have hardly even qualified as food. Nevertheless, they munched away at their portions, licking grains of rice off their fingers and biting noisily into the pickles.

  Their facial expressions varied. Most avoided eye contact with their captors, but some, whose face muscles were more relaxed, gazed imploringly toward Takuya and his colleague. Others cast frightened glances at them.

  In the end cell a fair-haired man lay on a straw-filled futon on the concrete floor, eating a rice ball. A dark bruise from a blow to the face covered the area from his nose to the point of his right cheekbone, and bandaging on his rib cage was visible through his unbuttoned jacket.

  ‘This one’s been shot with a hunting-rifle,’ whispered the slightly built legal officer, appearing suddenly from behind. Takuya looked into the cell as the lieutenant read out the report prepared by the kempeitai on this particular American prisoner. The man had been a crew member of a B-29 involved in a night raid on Yawata and Kokura on the twenty-seventh of March. When his plane was hit, he had parachuted into the woods near Ono in the Oita area. People from a nearby village saw this and ran out to find the man, then clubbed him with sticks before shooting him through the shoulder and right lung with a hunting-rifle. Evidently the wounded airman had been handed over to the police by the villagers, and then on to the kempeitai, who had arranged for him to receive medical treatment before being transported to Western Regional Headquarters.

  The man was obviously aware that people were watching him through the bars, but he ignored them, staring up at the ceiling as he ate. He seemed to Takuya to have long eyelashes and a remarkably pointed nose.

  When he heard how the villagers had beaten and shot this American, Takuya realised that despite his being a military man, bound by duty to clash with the enemy, his own feelings of hostility toward the B-29 crews paled in comparison to the villagers’. Up to this point, his contact with the enemy had been limited to information about aircraft detected by electronic listening-devices or seen by spotters. In contrast, inhabitants of the mountain villages no doubt felt intense hatred when they saw B-29s flying over, as the objective of the bombers’ mission was nothing less than the mass slaughter of civilians such as themselves. This hatred was the driving force behind their outbursts of violence toward the downed crew members.

  It occurred to Takuya that these twenty-four American airmen in front of him were the embodiment of an enemy which had slaughtered untold numbers of his people. They had come back again and again to devastate Japanese towns and cities, leaving behind countless dead and wounded civilians. The idea that these men were receiving rice balls despite the virtual exhaustion of food supplies for the average Japanese citizen stirred anger in Takuya towards those in headquarters responsible for such decisions.

  ‘Look at the awful shoes they’ve got on,’ said the officer, with raw contempt in his eyes.

  The prisoners’ shoes were all made of cloth, reminiscent of those ordinarily worn when embarking on nothing more adventurous than a casual stroll. Some were torn at the seams. Considering the obvious inexperience of the young men manning the bombers, and their cheap footwear, Takuya wondered whether the much-vaunted American affluence was starting to wane.

  After that day Takuya was never assigned to watch over the cells, but he took considerable interest in the decision about what to do with the men in them. No doubt the Army Ministry had delegated authority over the airmen because the intensified bombing attacks ruled out transporting prisoners to a central destination. This was evident from the concise wording of the order to ‘handle as you see fit’. Even so, the precise meaning of ‘as you see fit’ was unclear.

  Takuya thought back to the first raid by North American B-25 medium bombers just four short months after the start of the war. A force of sixteen enemy planes had taken off from an aircraft carrier and flown at low altitude into the Tokyo and Yokohama area to bomb and strafe targets before retreating toward China, where eight men from two planes that crash-landed near Nanchang and Ningpo had been captured by the Imperial Army. A university student at the time, Takuya remembered reading in the newspaper that the captured men had been tried by a military court on charges of carrying out bombing attacks designed to kill and wound non-combatants in urban areas, and strafing defenceless schoolchildren and fishermen. All had been found guilty as charged, and some were sentenced to death, others to terms of imprisonment. Takuya remembered seeing a photograph of the airmen wearing black hoods over their heads as they were led to their execution.

  The fact that executions had been carried out after that raid surely left little room for debate over the fate of the twenty-four prisoners now in their custody. Once the B-29s moved their base of operations to Saipan, they began to concentrate their attacks on urban areas in general, as opposed to military installations and munitions factories. The Superfortresses gradually switched their targets, dropping huge quantities of incendiary bombs on medium-sized and even smaller towns outside the Kyushu and Shikoku areas. The extent of the devastation was immense; according to reports from central headquarters, more than a hundred thousand people had already been killed and over nine hundred thousand dwellings razed to the ground, affecting over two and a half million people. These fire raids were serious violations of the rules of war, so surely the handling of B-29 crew members would not be bound by provisions regarding the custody of normal prisoners of war.

  Processing these prisoners began with interrogating them to acquire information which might help headquarters staff in their efforts against the bombing raids, and as the officer in charge of anti-aircraft intelligence, Takuya observed the interrogations. There were general questions about the number of aircraft at the bases in Saipan, as well as about the runways and hangars, followed by more specific questions about the scale of various kinds of facilities and whether or not there were plans for expansion, and then questions about the capabilities of the B-29, its weak points, and the flight paths used to enter and leave Japanese airspace. The interrogations were carried out both individually and in groups, and the captured crew members replied to the questions posed by the interpreter, Lieutenant Shirasaka, with surprising candour. The content of their answers was consistent, and there was no indication whatsoever that they had tried to co-ordinate their approach to the interrogation. All had some signs of fear in their eyes, but every so often one of them would shrug his shoulders, casually gesture with his hands, and
even relax the muscles of his face slightly with the hint of a smile.

  One nineteen-year-old crewman looked Shirasaka straight in the face and said he had taken part in twelve raids on cities such as Tokyo, Nagoya and Kobe. There was no mistaking the pride in his expression.

  When asked to describe the scene inside the aircraft after dropping the bombs and turning back over the Pacific Ocean towards Saipan, one tall, blond twenty-two-or twenty-three-year-old smiled as he said something in quick reply. Shirasaka seemed momentarily taken aback, but then told the others the American had said that on the way back the B-29 crew members listened to jazz on the radio. Other airmen had replied to the same question by saying that crew members showed each other pornographic photos during the flight back.

  When he heard Shirasaka’s translations of these almost nonchalant remarks, Takuya felt an urge to lash out at the prisoner. While Takuya and his comrades had been doing their utmost to minimise the damage to their country, these men had been treating the bombing raids as sport. He had seen numerous photographs of wrecked B-29s with pictures of naked women painted on the fuselage beside flame-shaped marks indicating the number of bombing raids the aircraft had made, but now he knew that these men felt no remorse at all for having destroyed the lives and property of so many Japanese civilians.